Masturbation is one of the most common sexual behaviors worldwide, reported by a majority of men and a substantial proportion of women across nearly every population studied. In Britain’s most recent national probability survey, about three-quarters of men and four in ten women said they had masturbated in the past month. Those figures hold broadly across Western countries, though the gender gap is wide and the numbers shift with age, relationship status, and cultural context in ways that are more interesting than the headline rates alone.
How Common It Is, by Gender and Age
Large, well-designed surveys give the clearest picture. Britain’s National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles found that roughly 73 percent of men and 37 percent of women reported masturbating in the four weeks before the interview.1PubMed. Prevalence of masturbation and associated factors in a British national probability survey A follow-up survey a decade later showed those numbers had ticked upward to about 78 percent for men and 40 percent for women.2PubMed. Trends in Masturbation Prevalence and Associated Factors: Findings from the British National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles These figures reflect past-month activity, so the share of people who have ever masturbated is considerably higher.
The gender gap is one of the most consistent findings in this research and shows up in every country and age group studied. Men are roughly twice as likely as women to report recent masturbation. Whether that reflects actual behavior differences or just differences in willingness to report is debated, but the gap has remained stable even as overall rates have climbed.
Age does not eliminate masturbation the way many people assume. A study of adults over 60 across four European countries found that between 41 and 65 percent of older men and 27 to 40 percent of older women had masturbated in the preceding month.3PubMed Central. Prevalence of Masturbation and Associated Factors Among Older Adults in Four European Countries Rates do decline with age, but the behavior remains common well into later life, particularly among people who maintain an active interest in sex.
What Predicts Whether Someone Masturbates
You might guess that people masturbate mainly when they don’t have a partner, but the picture is more nuanced. Among older adults, the strongest predictor of masturbation was simply having frequent sexual thoughts. Partnership mattered less than you’d think. Only people who described their relationship as both physically and emotionally satisfying were meaningfully less likely to masturbate.4Innovation in Aging. Who Masturbates? It Depends: Predictors of Masturbation by Gender and Partnership of Older Adults For everyone else, being in a relationship did not suppress the behavior.
Dissatisfaction with how often sex happened was also a significant predictor, which makes intuitive sense. But the same data showed that among women specifically, higher depression scores and bothersome sexual dysfunction were linked to increased masturbation, while that pattern didn’t hold for men.4Innovation in Aging. Who Masturbates? It Depends: Predictors of Masturbation by Gender and Partnership of Older Adults That hints at a gendered difference in what masturbation serves: for some women it may function partly as self-soothing or a way of maintaining a sexual connection with their own body during difficult periods.
Ejaculation Frequency and Prostate Cancer Risk
One of the most widely cited health claims about masturbation involves prostate cancer. A large prospective study following tens of thousands of men over multiple decades found that those who ejaculated 21 or more times per month had roughly a 20 percent lower risk of prostate cancer compared to those who ejaculated four to seven times per month. That association held for ejaculation frequency recalled from ages 20 to 29 and again from ages 40 to 49, and the trend was statistically significant.5PubMed Central. Ejaculation Frequency and Risk of Prostate Cancer: Updated Results with an Additional Decade of Follow-up The association was strongest for low-risk prostate cancers and remained after the researchers accounted for screening patterns and competing causes of death.
That said, this doesn’t mean frequent masturbation is a proven cancer-prevention strategy. A narrative review of the full body of evidence noted that while some studies support the inverse relationship between ejaculation frequency and prostate cancer risk, others have produced conflicting findings.6PubMed. Ejaculation Frequency and Prostate Cancer Risk: A Narrative Review of Current Evidence The data is suggestive rather than conclusive, and no medical organization currently recommends ejaculation frequency as a cancer-prevention measure. The mechanism, if real, may involve flushing out carcinogenic secretions or reducing prostatic stasis, but that remains speculative.
Does Masturbation Help You Sleep?
Many people report falling asleep faster after masturbation, and researchers have started to test whether the effect is real or just perception. A diary study found that both men and women perceived that partnered sex and masturbation with orgasm improved how quickly they fell asleep and how well they slept. When the researchers looked at objective measures, though, only partnered sex with orgasm was associated with a measurably faster time to fall asleep and better sleep quality. Masturbation with or without orgasm didn’t show the same objective benefit.7PubMed. The influence of sexual activity on sleep: A diary study
A pilot study using actigraphy, which tracks movement during sleep, painted a slightly different picture. Participants who masturbated spent less time awake after falling asleep compared to nights with no sexual activity at all, and their sleep patterns were similar to nights when they had partnered sex.8Sleep Health. The impact of sexual activity on objective and subjective sleep parameters: A pilot study The discrepancy between studies probably comes down to sample size and measurement methods, but the general picture is that orgasm, regardless of how it happens, produces neurochemical changes that could promote relaxation. The post-orgasm surge of prolactin, which accompanies the feeling of satiety and drowsiness, is one plausible mechanism.9The Journal of Sexual Medicine. (058) HYPNOTIC INDUCTION OF ORGASM INCREASES PLASMA PROLACTIN IN WOMEN Whether that translates into reliably better sleep is still an open question, but the effect is probably modest rather than dramatic.
Masturbation and Relationships
A common worry is that masturbation takes something away from a partnered sex life. Research doesn’t really bear that out. A dyadic study of couples found that when women held positive attitudes toward their own solo masturbation, both they and their partners reported higher sexual satisfaction.10PubMed. (Dis)Similarities in Attitudes Between Partners About Women’s Solo Masturbation: A Dyadic Approach to Solo Masturbation and Its Associations with Sexual Satisfaction The researchers noted that women’s masturbation appears to be less stigmatized than is commonly assumed and suggested that normalizing masturbation within a relationship’s sexual repertoire could benefit both partners.
There’s also a link between body image and orgasm during masturbation. Women who felt more satisfied with their bodies reported reaching orgasm more frequently during both partnered sex and masturbation, and they reported greater pleasure from those orgasms.11Sexual Medicine. Body Image, Orgasmic Response, and Sexual Relationship Satisfaction: Understanding Relationships and Establishing Typologies Based on Body Image Satisfaction The correlations were modest, but they point to something worth noting: comfort with your own body seems to matter for sexual enjoyment across contexts, not just with a partner.
Among adolescents, masturbation is recognized as a normal part of sexual development. Researchers have noted fundamental differences in how male and female adolescents express sexuality through masturbation, and have called on healthcare providers to discuss masturbation openly with teens because it is integral to healthy sexual development.12JAMA Pediatrics. Prevalence, Frequency, and Associations of Masturbation With Partnered Sexual Behaviors Among US Adolescents
When Masturbation Becomes a Problem
For most people, masturbation causes no distress and no functional impairment. But a small subset of people develop a compulsive pattern that fits the criteria for compulsive sexual behavior disorder, which was formally recognized in the ICD-11. The condition involves a persistent inability to control intense sexual urges, leading to repetitive behaviors that cause real distress or interfere with daily life.13American Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience. Exploring Psychiatric Heterogeneity in Compulsive Sexual Behaviour Disorder Excessive masturbation is one of the behaviors commonly present in people with this condition, alongside excessive pornography use and other out-of-control sexual behaviors that lead to impairment.14PubMed. An integrated model to assess and treat compulsive sexual behaviour disorder
The key distinction is between frequency and distress. Masturbating daily or even multiple times a day isn’t inherently problematic if it doesn’t interfere with your work, relationships, or well-being. The clinical threshold is crossed when the behavior feels uncontrollable, when you keep doing it despite wanting to stop, or when it’s causing genuine harm to other parts of your life. Frequency alone is a poor diagnostic marker.
The Weight of Shame and Cultural Baggage
A significant proportion of the distress people associate with masturbation has nothing to do with the behavior itself and everything to do with what they were taught about it. The United States has an unusually long history of antimasturbation fervor. American medical leaders in the 19th century were convinced that masturbation caused nearly every social problem and disease, and the U.S. medical establishment continued to treat it as pathological well into the mid-20th century, long after germ theory had demolished the original pseudoscientific rationale.15PubMed. The antimasturbation crusade in antebellum American medicine Religious traditions also contributed: the “secret sin” framing from Judeo-Christian teaching created deep shame that researchers have documented as a source of lasting psychological damage.16PubMed. Twentieth-century attitudes toward masturbation
That legacy is still measurable. A study of religious adolescents found that moral disapproval of masturbation occupied a central position in the psychological network linking compulsive sexual behavior and sexual shame. Among more religious individuals, disapproval of masturbation was tightly connected to shame and to feelings of compulsivity, forming a reinforcing cluster that didn’t exist among less religious peers.17PubMed Central. The Sacred, the Sinful, and the Shamed: The Association Between Compulsive Sexual Behavior, Moral Disapproval, and Sexual Shame Among Jewish Religious Adolescents In other words, for these young people, the belief that masturbation is wrong didn’t just coexist with shame; it actively amplified it.
A separate ecological momentary assessment study, which tracked people’s feelings in real time, confirmed that moral incongruence intensifies the emotional fallout from masturbation. Participants who viewed masturbation as morally wrong experienced more pronounced and sustained increases in shame, guilt, difficulty concentrating, and mood deterioration afterward, compared to people without that moral framework.18PubMed Central. Quantifying Opponent Process Dynamics in Pornography Use and Masturbation: An Exploratory Ecological Momentary Assessment Study The behavior itself didn’t cause the distress; the conflict between doing it and believing it was wrong did. This is an important distinction for anyone who feels terrible after masturbating but can’t clearly identify what harm the act is causing. The harm may be coming from the belief system, not the behavior.
Research on women has also found that higher levels of psychological distress predict more frequent masturbation, but the relationship appears to run in both directions. Some women may use clitoral stimulation specifically as a coping mechanism during periods of low mood or interpersonal difficulty.19PubMed Central. Exploring the Role of Masturbation as a Coping Strategy in Women That isn’t inherently unhealthy, but it’s worth being honest with yourself about whether masturbation is serving as a genuine source of pleasure or primarily as an avoidance strategy.
Masturbation in Sex Therapy
In a historical irony, the behavior that was once branded a disease became one of the most effective treatments for sexual dysfunction. Directed masturbation training, where a therapist guides a person through a structured program of self-exploration, has been used since the 1970s to treat women who have never experienced orgasm. A controlled trial found that 90 percent of women who followed a directed masturbation program gained the ability to orgasm, compared to 53 percent of women treated with conventional therapy. More strikingly, 85 percent of the masturbation group became regularly orgasmic during intercourse as well.20PubMed. A controlled study to evaluate directed masturbation in the management of primary orgasmic failure in women
Subsequent reviews confirmed that directed masturbation training can help some clients, though the evidence is clearer on achieving orgasm through self-stimulation than on reliably transferring that capacity to partnered sex in every case.21PubMed. The use of directed masturbation training in the treatment of primary anorgasmia The approach remains a standard tool in sex therapy today, grounded in the straightforward logic that learning what your body responds to on your own is easier than trying to figure it out with the added complexity of another person.
Why Primates Masturbate at All
From a purely evolutionary standpoint, masturbation seems wasteful. It costs energy and, in males, it expends reproductive material without any chance of fertilization. So why is the behavior so widespread across primate species? A large comparative study of nearly 300 primate species found evidence for two complementary explanations. In males, masturbation coevolved with mating systems in a way consistent with postcopulatory selection: in species where females mate with multiple males, solo sexual behavior may help males keep their sperm fresh or practice for competitive mating. Male masturbation also coevolved strongly with pathogen exposure, suggesting it may function as a genital hygiene mechanism that flushes out pathogens before or after mating.22PubMed Central. The evolution of masturbation is associated with postcopulatory selection and pathogen avoidance in primates
Neither pattern held for female primates, whose masturbation didn’t track with mating system or pathogen pressure. That doesn’t mean female masturbation is random or purposeless, only that the evolutionary pressures shaping it are less well understood. The research is a useful reminder that masturbation isn’t some modern quirk or cultural artifact. It’s deeply embedded in primate biology and has been maintained by natural selection for millions of years.
Sex Toys and Sexual Function
Vibrators and other sex toys have become common accessories for masturbation, and the data on their effects is generally positive. A nationally representative study of American women found that vibrator use was associated with better scores on multiple measures of sexual function, including desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, and overall function.23PubMed. Prevalence and characteristics of vibrator use by women in the United States: results from a nationally representative study The relationship was correlational, so it’s possible that women with better sexual function are simply more likely to use vibrators. But there’s no evidence that vibrator use harms function, and clinicians increasingly recommend them as part of treatment for arousal and orgasm difficulties.
Among women over 60, those who used sex toys frequently during masturbation were more likely to report consistent orgasms compared to women who used them less often or not at all. The gap wasn’t trivial: about 84 percent of frequent toy users reported almost always reaching orgasm, compared to around 75 percent of less frequent users. For older women dealing with age-related changes in arousal and sensitivity, toys can bridge a gap that the body alone may struggle to close.